ADVANTAGE STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME TACTICS
ON THIS OVERCAST autumn morning, Stephen Peacocke has woken up at his parents’ place in his hometown of Dubbo, 400 kilometres northwest of Sydney. He's in good spirits, not only because he's back where it all began, but because an overnight downpour and a midmorning sun shower have moistened the land and filled the air with the smell of rain. “I love it,” he says. “And the central west – the earth, the grasses and the trees . . . it has a distinct smell, which I miss.”
Lately, Peacocke has been working a lot in Melbourne, on the sets of Five Bedrooms (returning later this year for its fourth season, on Paramount+) and The Newsreader (ditto, second season, ABC), and these trips to Dubbo to reunite with family have been harder to pull off than usual. But he's here now and doing the things he always does when he's home – checking out the main street and the Macquarie River, cruising past his old primary school, whacking balls at the local tennis courts. “The place is the same,” he says. “Just bigger.”
Which happens to be an apt metaphor for Peacocke himself, who's managed to build a strong career on the notoriously wobbly foundations of acting talent. The sport-loving kid from the bush who used to rent films from the local Video Ezy so he could study the methods of giants like De Niro, Brando and Pacino is these days a someone himself – but, oh man, talk about staying the same. Now 41, he's no different to the guy sat down with a veritable lifetime ago, when his five-year stint as Darryl Braxton on was the centrepiece of his résumé. High-profile television roles, feature-film appearances (, , ), popularity awards, giddy female
